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My Love Life: An Epiphany
Five months ago, my partner of almost twelve years told me he wanted out. To say the news upset me would be an understatement of near epic proportions. Tidal waves of fear washed over me as I thought about a future without him. I’m happy to say that, although we move in different circles, he’s…
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Dealing with Rejection
When it comes to writing, practice makes perfect. The more I write, the better my writing gets. The improvement comes in terms of both the mechanical aspects–grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary–and in my ability to create a good story. In its current form, Glass Houses, the very first book I penned back in 2010, will never get…
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Toodles Returns
I’m back. Have you missed me? What a stupid question. Of course you have! Two years is a long time to go without your Toodles fix. It’s Daddy’s fault you haven’t heard from me. He hogs the computer to write those books of his. On a good day, I’m lucky to sneak online long enough…
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Bitten by the Garden Bug
When my first ex and I moved into a duplex back in the late 1980s, the yard wasn’t even a factor in our search. The previous tenant must have had a big dog or two, as the fenced in back yard was more mud than grass–especially the perimeter. I planted a few impatiens around the…
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Hello New Me!
The year I turned fifty, my health went down the toilet. My colonoscopy turned up a precancerous lesion that required surgery, but fortunately, needed no chemotherapy or radiation. The retina specialist diagnosed my advanced macular degeneration, and I was in and out of the dermatologist’s office with numerous skin problems. The last straw was finding…
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My New Normal: Part Deux
I’m a grown-assed man and a creature of habit. Having never had a wife or children, I’m also used to having things my way. Yes, I’m more than a little set in my ways and interfering, as any of my ex-lovers will tell you, is ill-advised. For all kinds of reasons, changing my morning routine–the subject…
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Writing Update
Things are finally settling into something I’m calling my new normal. My kitchen table is down to just three piles–a stack of clothes that need to go to the dry cleaner, a reminder from my realtor that I need to get downtown to file the homestead exemption for my new house, and the stack of…
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Dereliction of Duties: Seven Excuses
My new normal is crazy busy. I thought the situation was temporary. For months I’ve believed that things would slow down once I got over the next hump. Being a slow learner, it took me more than a year to figure out that busy is here to stay. Reading and commenting on the blogs I’ve…
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The Way We Were
Some of you probably remember the way things were before the Internet made anyone with a Smartphone or a computer a know-it-all. Okay, who am I kidding? Nobody much under forty reads my blog. As memory loss is far more likely to be an issue, let me remind you. When a question came up, we would…
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The Longest Month
January is my least favorite month. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I detest the first 31 days of the year. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. Let’s start with the temperature. Here in Athens, January is the coldest month of the year. The average high is 54,…